After coaxing Xiao Bai to sleep, Jiang Yanyi realized it had started raining outside at some point.
At the turn of the staircase on the second floor, there was a narrow floor-to-ceiling glass window, half-open. Rain had wet a small patch of the floor in front of it.
While closing the window, Jiang Yanyi noticed a small snail on the windowsill. Shutting the window would crush it.
He was terrified of soft, hairless, cold-bodied creatures and didn’t dare pick up the snail with his hands. After searching around the house, he found two cotton swabs. Using one in each hand, he gingerly picked up the snail and placed it on a leaf outside before closing the window.
Outside, the rain suddenly intensified. Dense raindrops slammed down, carving gullies on the glass. Jiang Yanyi watched the rain calmly—drop after drop, merging into sheets, then cascading down from above.
On such rainy nights, he always thought of Bai Yidong.
When they had just married, they lived in the teacher’s apartment on campus, on the second floor, with a small balcony.
The campus had lush greenery. On summer rainy nights, various small creatures would visit their balcony—common ones included snails, geckos, moths, and such.
Whenever this happened, Bai Yidong would act as the household’s bug-removal ambassador, wearing slippers and a nightgown, picking up these little creatures with her bare hands and moving them outside.
When she caught bugs, Jiang Yanyi didn’t dare watch. If she spotted him nearby, she would deliberately pick up the bugs to scare him.
At first, Jiang Yanyi had no experience and foolishly stood by the sliding door watching. Bai Yidong once grabbed a large gecko and thrust it right in his face:
“Professor Jiang, look how plump and beautiful this gecko is.”
The sudden eye contact with the gecko’s little black bead eyes nearly scared Jiang Yanyi into fainting.
To Jiang Yanyi, Bai Yidong herself was also like a mystery.
The Bai and Jiang families were old friends. When they were children, the adults had jokingly mentioned an arranged marriage, but later no one took it seriously.
Especially after the two families’ fathers drifted apart due to differing views, Jiang Yanyi hadn’t seen Bai Yidong for over a decade.
One day, just after class, he was cornered by students with questions at the classroom door—several female students.
College students are youthful and lively, and Jiang Yanyi was a shy, introverted young male professor. A few bold students often used questions as an excuse to tease him, making the professor blush, then happily pushing and shoving each other as they ran off.
That day, after finally extricating himself, he encountered a girl in a white dress with a high ponytail, calling him from the end of the corridor: “Jiang Yanyi.”
Jiang Yanyi looked up. The person seemed unfamiliar, not like one of his students. Besides, students always called him Professor Jiang—no one had ever called him by his full name.
“Student, can I help you?” Jiang Yanyi adjusted his glasses, somewhat confused.
The girl smiled at him. “I’m Bai Yidong. Have you forgotten? We were betrothed as children.”
Jiang Yanyi stood stunned, as did the lively female students nearby, probably never having seen anyone bolder than themselves.
After that encounter, Bai Yidong started frequently visiting Jiang Yanyi on campus.
She would eat the cafeteria’s spicy fried chicken legs with him. Every time Jiang Yanyi’s face turned red from the spice, Bai Yidong would laugh and open a yogurt, placing it in front of him.
Walking on the sports field, Bai Yidong would loop her arm through his, press her face against his shoulder, half-hanging on him as they walked.
The entire campus soon knew the handsome professor teaching robot ethics was taken. The female students stopped bothering Jiang Yanyi, and when they saw Bai Yidong, they smoothly called her “Professor’s Wife.”
Less than a month after reconnecting, Bai Yidong asked Jiang Yanyi:
“When are you going to marry me? Hurry up and marry me. I want to have your baby.”
Back then, Jiang Yanyi’s mother had just passed away from illness, and he couldn’t return to his father’s house anymore. Homeless, Jiang Yanyi seriously considered the question: Should he marry Bai Yidong?
Later, when visiting as Bai Yidong’s fiancé, Jiang Yanyi learned that before meeting him, Bai Yidong had suffered cardiac arrest from excessive overtime work. After being resuscitated, it was as if she had become a different person.
Before, Bai Yidong had been quiet and introverted, wholly dedicated to her career, and had even said she planned to remain single.
After resuscitation, Bai Yidong completely forgot about her career. Her personality became impulsive and energetic, and she constantly talked about “wanting to have Jiang Yanyi’s baby.”
Later, they married, and Bai Yidong immediately tried for a baby. She was still a bit unreliable, but she loved their child deeply, loved Jiang Yanyi deeply, and loved their little family deeply.
Before Bai Yidong disappeared, Jiang Yanyi always felt Bai Yidong loved him more.
His feelings for Bai Yidong weren’t exactly passionate or dependent—not that kind of profound, lingering love. Everything just flowed naturally, except the water and the channel were both created by Bai Yidong. He just stood there, doing nothing, and enjoyed her fervent, fragrant affection.
It wasn’t until Bai Yidong disappeared that Jiang Yanyi realized how much he missed her.
This longing didn’t fade with time. Instead, the small details of their time together became clearer because he often reminisced.
Jiang Yanyi even regretted not having argued with Bai Yidong before. That way, he could reasonably believe she had hidden away because she hated him.
Instead of like now, where she disappeared for no reason at all.
After Bai Yidong disappeared, Jiang Yanyi often had a dream. In it, he was trapped at the edge of a cliff. Below was a pitch-black, turbulent sea. Above, a smooth cliff face with nothing to grip. Each time he tried desperately to climb up, his body would slide down the frictionless rock face, falling endlessly.
Every time he woke, the helplessness from the dream merged with reality.
His mind was a chaotic jumble of thoughts. He didn’t know when he drifted into a fitful sleep. Half-awake, he seemed to return to the teacher’s apartment.
Back then, Zhibai wasn’t even a month old. Jiang Yanyi had taken paternity leave to care for his wife and daughter at home.
The first time bathing the baby, Jiang Yanyi consulted many tutorials, but when it came to actually doing it, he was still at a loss.
Bai Yidong, wrapped in a fluffy bear sweater, stood outside the bathroom door directing, “Just lay her flat on the bathroom counter. Pour water from the top of her head backward, so it won’t get on her face.”
Jiang Yanyi ignored her ridiculous suggestion—the counter was hard and cold. How could you put a baby there?
He cradled the baby in his palm, gently scooping water with his other hand and pouring it over the baby’s fuzzy, kiwi-like little head.
After bathing the child, Jiang Yanyi’s pajamas were completely soaked.
It was already autumn. After settling the baby, a chilly wind from the balcony made Jiang Yanyi shiver with cold.
He couldn’t distinguish between reality and dream. The cold wind woke him. He hadn’t covered himself with a blanket and was chilled all over.
He stared blankly at the curtains fluttering in the wind, dazed for a long while.
·
Chi Xiaoxue had a difficult night.
In the afternoon, the engineers repaired her finger, but they never proceeded with the next step of fixing her.
She thought maybe her problem was more serious, and they needed to discuss the plan in advance.
However, they had disassembled a robot and hadn’t had time to reassemble it before leaving work. The robot’s dismembered limbs were simply piled in the laboratory.
In the middle of the night, it started raining, growing heavier with thunder and lightning.
Being in this laboratory with glass walls on two sides felt utterly unsafe. Chi Xiaoxue was afraid a lightning strike might shatter the massive glass panels.
She was already scared, and then the head of the dismembered robot suddenly started talking in the middle of the night. It said, “I want to go home. I want to find Xiao Lu.”
Then it said, “It was my fault. That’s why Xiao Lu cut me with a knife. It’s my fault, not Xiao Lu’s. Ann will always love Xiao Lu.”
After a quiet moment, it suddenly started singing.
Everything from the neck down had been removed. A solitary head sat on the table, its mouth opening and closing as it hummed an unknown tune.
Outside, lightning flashed, thunder roared, and rain poured. Inside, a head hummed an eerie melody.
Chi Xiaoxue huddled in a corner, terrified, enduring the entire night.
When dawn came and the engineers arrived for work, opening the lab door, Chi Xiaoxue felt a surreal sense of rebirth.
Like those great female protagonists reborn after extreme darkness, Chi Xiaoxue suddenly began to hate this world, hate those engineers chatting and laughing with coffee in hand.
She hated Jiang Yanyi even more for sending her here.
Now, even if Jiang Yanyi knelt crying before her, begging her to come home, even if he tried to bribe her with two large boxes of nutritional jelly, she would ignore him coldly.
Chi Xiaoxue decided that from now on, she would lock away her heart and love, becoming a carefree wanderer.
She would be a noble, aloof villain, a complete and utter bad person.
While lost in these thoughts, the female engineer named Yao Tong entered the laboratory and called out, “Moji, come out for a moment.”
“Alright.” Chi Xiaoxue immediately stood up and walked over, well-behaved, enthusiastic, and attentive.
After Chi Xiaoxue left the lab, Yao Tong led her down the corridor, then took an elevator.
She didn’t know where Yao Tong was taking her. Was her modification about to begin? Would she soon be dismembered like the robot last night?
But whatever came next, Chi Xiaoxue resolved to perform well, be a qualified robot, and strive to return home as soon as possible.
The elevator chimed, and the doors opened. Chi Xiaoxue first saw neatly parked vehicles outside—it looked like a parking garage.
Why were they in a parking garage?
Just as she wondered, she quickly spotted a person standing beside a black car.
Behind that person happened to be a strong beam of light. From her angle, looking against the light, she couldn’t see his face clearly, but the tall, slender silhouette—Chi Xiaoxue recognized it at a glance. It was Jiang Yanyi.
She was a bit dazed, unsure why Jiang Yanyi was here at this moment.
Yao Tong had her hands in her coat pockets. She gestured toward Chi Xiaoxue with her chin. “Moji, Professor Jiang is here to take you home.”
As soon as she finished speaking, Chi Xiaoxue rushed past her.
As if afraid Jiang Yanyi would change his mind, she kept her head down, charging straight to the car. Like a nimble little cat, she deftly slipped through the open car door into the cabin and very sensibly fastened her seatbelt herself.